The police want the editors to reveal the source of their story

The managing director of the East African Standard, Tom Mshindi, the editor of the newspaper's Sunday edition, David Makali, and his deputy Kwamchetsi Makokha were arrested on Monday by officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID).

The Sunday Standard published a detailed police interview with the alleged killers of Odhiambo Mbai, who headed a committee on devolution of power in the national constitutional review conference.

Police want them to reveal the source of their story on the investigations into Mr Mbai's killing.

Several senior politicians, including the Minister for Roads and Public Works, Raila Odinga - a close associate of President Mwai Kibaki - described the killing as a political assassination.

'Incommunicado'

"Arresting journalists and visiting media houses to intimidate media practitioners contradicts all official pronouncements and greatly infringes on press freedom," KUJ Secretary General Ezekiel Mutua told a Nairobi news conference.

Two of the editors, Mr Mshindi and Mr Makokha, have temporarily been released.

Raila Odinga said the murder was a political assassination

"We made statements, telling them how we operate... we get information... and if we are satisfied it served the public interest, we run it... that is what happened," said Mr Mshindi.

But Mr Makali is still in police custody despite statements by the police that he would be charged in a court of law on Tuesday.

"He is being held incommunicado," the executive editor of the newspaper, Kwendo Opanga, told BBC News Online.

Wrangling

Mr Opanga said that the newspaper's lawyers had written to the minister in charge of security, Chris Murangaru, to protest at the arrest and the intimidation of the three editors.

Mr Murangaru earlier described the publication of the alleged confessions of the suspects as a "gross breach of the law".

According to the newspaper, the suspects allegedly told the police that a politician in the ruling National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) hired them to kill Mr Mbai on 14 September.

Mr Mbai's killing happened at a time when senior Narc officials were involved in public wrangling over whether a prime minister envisioned in a draft constitution should share power with the president.